to show that Lincoln was preaching the amalgamation of the white and
black races. "I protest," Lincoln replied, "against the counterfeit
logic which says that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I
must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either.
I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my
equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her
own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal and
the equal of all others."(2) Any false move made by Douglas, any
rash assertion, was sure to be seized upon by that watchful enemy in
Illinois. In attempting to defend himself on two fronts at once, defying
both the Republicans and the Democratic machine, Douglas made his
reckless declaration that all he wanted was a fair vote by the people
of Kansas; that for himself he did not care how they settled the matter,
whether slavery was voted up or voted down. With relentless skill,
Lincoln developed the implications of this admission, drawing forth
from its confessed indifference to the existence of slavery, a chain
of conclusions that extended link by link to a belief in reopening
the African slave trade. This was done in his speech accepting the
Republican nomination for the Senate. In the same speech he restated his
general position in half a dozen sentences that became at once a classic
statement for the whole Republican party: "A house divided against
itself can not stand. I believe this government can not endure
permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in
the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward
till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new,
North as well as South."(3)